


Luckier than other people in that respect

by dapatty, ermengarde



Series: World in a Wardrobe [1]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Audio Format: M4B, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Collaboration, Community: pod_together, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Podfic & Podficced Works, world in a wardrobe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-02 13:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11510847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dapatty/pseuds/dapatty, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: I cannot do any better than the summary which I sent Patty way back at the start:So, I'm feeling Mikey, I think - something back in Frank & Mikey cohabiting days?Maybe their apartment gets rats or something distressing so they have to move in a hurry and end up in the attic of a converted big house, which is creepy af, but (a)cheap and (b)Frank likes creepy (and bonus (c)Gerard wants to draw all of it and Ray thinks cheap is good and Otter thinks they're all f'ing ridiculous, seriously, and why is it he has to carry all the boxes of shit so no one dies) ...





	Luckier than other people in that respect

**Author's Note:**

> Working with Patty is (as always) the MOST FUN. She actively encourages me to follow my heart to the ridiculous and is always right along side with me for the ride. Her cold reads have had me giggling helplessly in the most inappropriate places...It's just as well I've given up caring what people think of me. ILH and IL this challenge - it is one of the very best and most supported challenges in fandom, and I love it.
> 
> *Squeeful podficcer notes at the end of the recording.

Cover Art by dapatty.

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## Streaming Audio

## Downloads

  * [MP3](http://dapatty.parakaproductions.com/Pod%20Together/Luckier%20Than%20Other%20People%20in%20That%20Respect.mp3) | **Size:** 27 MB | **Duration:** 0:19:36
  * [Podbook](http://dapatty.parakaproductions.com/Pod%20Together/Luckier%20Than%20Other%20People%20in%20That%20Respect.m4b) | **Size:** 9.4 MB | **Duration:** 0:19:36
  * [Mobile Streaming](http://dapatty.parakaproductions.com/Pod%20Together/Luckier%20Than%20Other%20People%20in%20That%20Respect.mp3)

  
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It is, like, definitely not Mikey's fault that their stupid crappy apartment got rats, even if Frank keeps fucking saying it's because Mikey's a disgusting slob who can't do dishes. Mikey CAN do dishes, he just chooses not to. It's, like, if you do them every three days it doesn't take so much of your time and also Frank might get fucked off enough to do them himself, or mom might visit or something.

Anyway, he'll admit that the roaches maybe have something to do with him, but the giant, structural support eating rats? Not so much. The people who come and put giant warning signs on the door saying "Danger, Do Not Enter" told Frank that the infestation was coming up from the basement anyway, because the building wasn't up to code and they had, like, an uncapped sewer in there. Frankie ends up making good friends with the sign people, because they need to get back in to get their stuff out. And some of the landlord's stuff, they'll just say the rats must have eaten it if he asks. Anyway, they're evicted with no fucking notice and Mikey is NOT fucking moving back in with Mom. Gee's like, annexed his room as an art studio anyway. Frank says they can move in with HIS mom, but Mrs Iero is terrifying about laundry and Mikey is pretty sure she'd murder him in his sleep because of his socks or something. They spend half the day hanging out in their favorite diner, drinking coffee and planning and looking through the ads in the 4 billion newspapers that get left behind when people have finished their half-caf semi steamed mochas. 

There are, as Mikey expected, depressingly few places that are even close to their price range, and when they call, even those places - all in the terrifying bad part of town - have gone. It’s after 3 and the sky is dark and threatening rain and Ray’s brother is going to want his van back soon and Mikey is trying real hard to come to terms with the fact that he’s going to have to move back into a room with C3PO wallpaper and that smells of turpentine. Frankie’s calling yet another fucking dead end from the payphone at the back of the diner and Mikey’s contemplating the end of the best living situation of his life in the cold remains of his 87 millionth cup of coffee. He is so jittery from all the caffeine that he near jumps out of his skin when there’s a sudden bang on the window next to him. Gerard is outside, grinning like a half-rotten pumpkin, mouth stretched wide and showing all of his tiny ridiculous teeth, and waving a flyer at him. Mikey raises his what the fuck eyebrow and waits for Gee to come inside and explain himself.

“Mikey, Mikey, Mikey, Mikey, Mikey! I found you guys a place!” Gerard slaps the flyer down on the table in front of him. It’s one of those posters that’s up on every notice board at SVA, a hand-written ad scrawled at the top and a bunch of tear-off strips with a phone number at the bottom. None of the strips are missing. 

“How long has this been up?” Mikey pulls the paper closer, it’s probably gonna be another depressing wash, but he should probably read it since Gee brought it all the way out to Jersey. 

_Large penthouse apartment in a period property, two beds, one and a half bath, kitchen, lounge, study, box room. Would suit young people due to being on the fifth floor and narrow stairs_ There’s no way this is still available, it’s a fuckton of space for the money and it’s not even in a totally shitty part of town. Mikey looks up at Gee and gives him the _you’re fucking ridiculous_ face.

“Ha!” Gerard sticks his tongue out. “The ad only went up at lunchtime and I took it back down and called immediately. You guys have an appointment in…” Gerard looks at his watch. “FUCK! Eight and a half minutes.”

Gerard stands up and runs towards Frankie making grabby hands at him, and Mikey gathers up all their shit from the table. He drops an extra $5 onto his tip to make up for the mountain of newspapers they’re leaving behind them. 

 

They just about make it on time for their appointment, although Frank starts questioning Gerard’s map reading skills when he sees the neighborhood they’re heading towards. It is _nice_. There are big, old-fashioned houses, and wide streets and huge fucking gardens and shit. It’s creepy how nice it is. They pull up at the gate to the house, and there’s an old dude with a clipboard standing waiting for them.

Frank scrambles out of the van and goes to shake the man’s hand. Frankie is much better at all the Miss Manners shit that old dudes like than Mikey or Gee. Mikey kinda forgets that people don’t know him already, and Gee gets squirmy when people start looking at his clothes and hair and asking about when they were last washed. It’s easier if Frank does the polite stuff. 

The old dude looks a little overwhelmed at how enthusiastically Frank is greeting him. 

“Umm. You’re, um, Mr. Way? And his, umm…” The guy looks at Mikey and Gee. “Brother..?” 

Frank grins at him. “I’m Mr. Iero - they’re Mr. Way.” He gestures at Mikey and Gee. “Gerard is the one that called you, Mikey and I are ones who are looking at the place.” 

“Ah.” The man pulls his hand away from Frank. “Welcome gentlemen, I’m Mr. Kirke. Would you like to see the property?” 

Mr. Kirke, it turns out, owns the place, but he can’t manage the stairs up to the apartment, so he sends them up with the keys and waits for them in the entrance hall. The house is fucking _amazing_ , the entrance hall is huge and square, and the stairs curl up round the walls. There’s an enormous fireplace with a bench thing around it, like something in a book, and a big table in the middle that has letter trays for the mail marked with different apartment numbers. There are nine apartments, it looks like, and as they head up Mikey counts two numbered doors per floor. 

“Mikes!” Frank hisses. “I think we get a whole fucking floor, dude!” 

There are a _fuckton_ of stairs. Mikey wonders if they can get pizza delivered here, or if he’s just going to starve rather than climb up and down. He’s panting slightly by the time they get to the fourth floor and the stairway changes from wide and carpeted to narrow, steep and kind of dusty. 

Gerard pokes him in the shoulder. “Hey, if the landlord can’t get all the way up here you guys _totally_ won’t get inspected or anything. You don’t _ever_ need to clean up.” He sounds totally awed, but the Frankie turns around and death glares at him, so Mikey figures that cleaning up is probably going to be a completely inspection-independent part of his life. 

“If the landlord can’t get all the way up here, it’s probably a shit heap that’s never been maintained and that’s why it’s so cheap.” Mikey is pretty sure there’s something really fucking wrong with this apartment. 

The apartment is fucking _perfect_ , like, the ceilings are all angled and shit, and if Gabe ever visits he’s going to have to walk on his knees, but the walls are all wood-lined, and half the windows are these cool round things in the pointy eves bits of the roof and it’s kind of like being in a ship, except without the swaying and the vomiting and the pirates and the sharks. There are about a MILLION doors - the two bedrooms, the half bath off the master bedroom, the main bathroom, the kitchen, the lounge (which has these fucking SWEET windows that look out over the trees in the back yard), the kitchen (which is, like, the size of their whole last apartment and has a fucking table and chairs in it), the study (which Gee totally claims as his room, whatever, they can get a futon) and the box room and then all these OTHER doors that, like, open into closet kinda things built into the shorter bits of the roof. It is su-weet. 

“You’re totally going to take it, right?” Gerard looks at Mikey and Frankie wide eyed. 

“Well, duh.” Frank rolls his eyes. “We’re gonna need Ray and Otter to help move our shit in though, we’ll die if we try and carry our TV up here.” 

They almost tumble back down the stairs in their hurry to get to Mr. Kirke and the lease, and he smiles as he explains about the power and the water and the garbage shoot and the fact that there’s no disposal in the kitchen, but there _is_ cable. He doesn’t even need a first and last, which is fucking amazing, because that means they can totally eat more than just ramen for the next six weeks. They sign the lease and then spend half an hour driving around to find a phone box to call the guys to come help them move their shit in. 

Ray brings an old futon with him, and Mikey’s, like 90% sure they’ll never get rid of Gee, because Gee won’t fucking shut up about how much he needs to draw the place. Frankie keeps showing off how creepy it is with all the doors and the old trees outside and the creaking and the _space_ (seriously, it would be totally easy to lose someone in their apartment and not even notice), but Ray is mostly impressed with how cheap it is and the fact that they’ve got cable. Otter grumbles about being the only friend they have who isn’t entirely made of fucking twigs and if they’re going to move to an apartment halfway to the fucking moon can they please find some strong friends first next time. Mikey mostly hides from Otter. It’s better just to let him get on with it. 

Hiding in the shadows of the fireplace in the entrance hall is how Mikey meets Ed, who lives on the 1st floor and has a weed farm in the back yard. Ed gives him a fuckton of weed as a bribe not to call the cops. It is awesome. 

Ed and his awesome weed totally explains why Mikey is still mostly living out of boxes three weeks after they move in. Only like his clothes and books and shit, Frankie’s totally organised the FUCK out of the rest of the apartment (including the study that Gerard’s annexed. Frank making his terrifying organising face at 8am is the only reason why Gerard’s ever actually gone home since they moved in). Gerard going home, however, means Gerard coming back. And Gerard coming back when Mikey’s just moved into a new place means Donna’s totally driving him over and coming to look at the apartment. 

Mikey is totally fucking happy with his floor- and box-drobe combo, but he’s pretty sure that his mom is going to ask him pointed questions about why he’s ignoring the perfectly good wardrobe. Mikey would really prefer that she doesn’t nag him and that she gives him, like, $30 to buy something nice, so he makes a pot of coffee, watches three hours of cartoons and rolls up his sleeves. He can totally get his room tidy. 

about 9 billion hours later, Mikey is hot, dusty, sore and annoyed. Mom and Gee will be at the apartment in, like, an hour, and he's still fucking surrounded by boxes. Who fucking knew that hanging band shirts in order could take so long? Like, okay, he had to restart a couple of times until he decided that it was easier to remember the year the shirt was issued, rather than when he'd acquired it, but, like. NOT FAIR MAN. 

Mikey slumps on the floor behind the biggest pile of boxes. Fuck it, he can totally hide them in the roof space, he's unpacked enough stuff that Mom won't notice that it's not all there. Mikey twists the stiff wooden catch on the door into the roof space and opens it. It makes a creak loud enough to wake the dead (who are probably sleeping inside. Dead people or spiders, probably). It's dark inside, and there are a whole lot of coats hanging up, like someone used it to store their winter gear and forgot about it when they moved out. Mikey shrugs, more coats will be useful in the winter and they've forgotten to pay the heat again, and he grabs the nearest box and shoves it inside. He figures if he pushes it right to the back there should be enough space for everything, but it's fucking heavy and he ends up folded almost in half to put his full weight behind it and it still takes for _ever_ to reach the back and the coats keep catching on his back and in his hair and it's fucking freezing and..... and is that.... _mud_? 

Ed's weed is fucking psychotropic. Fucking Ed. Normally Mikey just gets, like, zorbing colors and really big hands and shit when he takes acid, not, like, a forest with tweeting birds and mud and _fucking trees that keep catching in his hair oh my God_. 

Mikey tugs at particularly ferocious branch that's gotten totally tangled in his hair, but when he eventually gets it loose he trips over a tree root and falls headlong into a stream. He has just long enough to wonder if this is his brain's interpretation of a broken pipe before he passes out. 

When Mikey wakes up, his head is throbbing slightly, but he's sitting on something soft and wrapped up cosy warm. He can hear a crackling noise and there's a smell like Elena's kitchen when he was little. 

"Muuuuuh." He moans slightly as he squints open his eyes. He doesn't have his glasses on and everything is blurry. 

"Oh my! Oh my! You're awake!" Gentle hands put his glasses on his face. 

"Woah." Perched on its back legs on the couch next to him is a really fucking big cat. It must be a maine coon or some shit, and it's pushing his glasses onto his face with a paw. 

"Um. Yeah. Um, hi?" Mikey is totally not sure how you're supposed to greet a cat you're hallucinating. Like, he figures he should probably be polite and shit, but he's not really good at that. 

The cat coughs. "Would you be, um, a human-type person?" 

"Yeah..." Mikey kind of wishes his arms weren't wrapped up in a blanket. 

"Oh! We've not had one of your kind here for a _very_ long time. Everyone will be most excited to meet you!" 

"Okay." Mikey does like meeting people, people are mostly kinda rad. 

The cat, it turns out, is called Mr. Pushok and he makes a really good cup of hot tea and some less good cake (Mikey tries to hide the hair he has to spit out. Cooking with all that fur must be hard). Mr. Pushok has, like, literally, a billion friends and they all crowd into his cosy little lounge to meet Mikey. He _thinks_ he can identify everyone's species, but he really doesn't know what Ms. Stribet is. She's fucking scarily enormous and striped kinda like a raccoon, but not. He's pretty sure she could snap him in two, so he doesn't ask. Maybe he can check a book later. 

It's nice, this weird tea party, but it's warm and almost stuffy, and Mikey is tired. He stifles a yawn, but not very well, and Mr, Pushok jumps up from where he's curled up by the fire. 

"Oh! Mr. Way is tired! Everyone must go home and let him sleep!" 

"Um..." Mikey struggles out of his blanket "What time is it?" 

One of the Squirrels checks it watch. "A little after four." 

"Oh Shi..oooot! My mom!" He is _so late_ mom is going to kill him. "I have to go, I'm sorry, I, uh....." He stands, and almost trips kicking the blanket off of his feet. "Thank you, it's been awesome!" 

He runs out of the little cottage and back into the forest. He has no fucking clue where he is, but he can hear the stream and see a light in that direction, so he goes that way. He figures the roof space can't really be all that big, so he can't really get lost. 

He finds the messed up bank of the stream where he fell in, and he finds his box of shit, and then he notices the dark bit where the mud turns into wooden boards. 

The door back into his room has closed over, and it is stiff when he pushes it, but it's not locked and once he gets over his panic that he's trapped in here forever he manages to open it pretty easily. 

His room is still a shit hole, but there are no anthropomorphic creatures or trees, so he figures that maybe his Ed-weed induced trip is over. 

He looks at the clock by his bed, it's only two thirty, which is weird, but gives him enough time to shove most of his boxes under the bed and to stack the others kinda-sorta neatly before Gee and Mom arrive. 

Mom doesn't even want to _see_ his room when she walks in, panting. She just collapses in a chair in the kitchen and lights a cigarette. 

"It's so clean...Has Frankie banned you from the kitchen again, baby?" She asks. 

"No." Mikey doesn't _think_ so, anyway, he might just have not been paying attention, but he figures Frankie wouldn't have made up all of those rules if he wasn't allowed in at all. "I just shouldn't open the fridge, turn on the oven or use the toaster. I can totally be in here." 

Mom snorts. "He's such a good roommate for you." 

Mikey frowns. He only fucked up the toaster _once_. 

"Awh, I totally think you should be allowed refrigerator rights." Gerard grins at him and gives him an enormous, ridiculous hug. It's nice, but then Gerard pulls away and sneezes like four hundred times. 

"Sorry, it must be the dust from the roof space." 

"I'm not allergic to dust!" Gerard pulls a long grey brown hair off of his sleeve. "Since when did you have a cat?" 

The end (for now) 

**Author's Note:**

> We are happy if other people would like to create more in this 'verse - let us know when you post it ! The tag for it is #world in a wardrobe


End file.
